Re-Evaluating Education in Japan and Korea

De-mystifying Stereotypes

Hyunjoon Park

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134072941
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

International comparisons of student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading have consistently shown that Japanese and Korean students outperform their peers in other parts of world. Understandably, this has attracted many policymakers and researchers seeking to emulate this success, but it has also attracted strong criticism and a range of misconceptions of the Japanese and Korean education system.

Directly challenging these misconceptions, which are prevalent in both academic and public discourses, this book seeks to provide a more nuanced view of the Japanese and Korean education systems. This includes the idea that the highly standardized means of education makes outstanding students mediocre; that the emphasis on memorization leads to a lack of creativity and independent thinking; that students' successes are a result of private supplementary education; and that the Japanese and Korean education systems are homogenous to the point of being one single system. Using empirical data Hyunjoon Park re-evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the existing education systems in Japan and Korea and reveals whether the issues detailed above are real or unfounded and misinformed.

Offering a balanced view of the evolving and complex nature of academic achievement among Japanese and Korean students, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian, international and comparative education, as well as those interested in Asian society more broadly.

1 Introduction

During the last few decades, Japan and South Korea (hereafter Korea) have achieved a remarkable increase in educational attainment among their populations. In 2009, almost everyone (98 percent) in the 25–34 age group completed at least high school (upper secondary) education in Korea (OECD 2011a). Compared to the remarkably high percentage among 25–34-year-olds, only less than half of 55–64-year-olds had high school education. The 55 percentage difference between the younger and older cohorts is the largest among 33 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries that reported the data. The expansion of tertiary education is as impressive as the expansion of secondary education, if not more so. In 2009, 63 percent of 25–34-year-olds in Korea had tertiary education, which was the highest percentage among OECD countries. However, the proportion of 55–64-year-olds who obtained tertiary education was only 13 percent in Korea, displaying the largest increase in the proportion of those with tertiary education between the younger and older age cohorts. In the same year, the proportion of 25–34-year-olds in Japan who had tertiary education was 56 percent, the third highest among OECD countries.¹ Although the proportion of 55–64-year-olds who obtained tertiary education was already relatively high (27 percent), the magnitude of increase between the younger and older age cohorts in the proportion of individuals with tertiary education was dramatic in Japan as well. In short, during the period of one generation Japan and, particularly, Korea have achieved remarkable growth in the levels of educational attainment among their populations.²

More importantly, this expansion of educational attainment in Japan and Korea occurred while maintaining an overall high quality of education. Results from various international comparisons of student achievement, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), have consistently shown outstanding performance from Japanese and Korean students. For instance, Japanese and Korean 8^th-grade students, along with their peers from Singapore and Taiwan, were top performers in TIMSS 1999 assessment of mathematics and science in which 38 countries participated (Martin, Mullis, Gonzalez et al. 2000; Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez et al. 2000). In PISA 2000, Japanese and Korean 15-year-olds ranked the top in both mathematics and science subjects among 31 countries (OECD 2001). Comparing educational performance of students in 24 OECD countries using five different measures of achievement from TIMSS and PISA, a study concluded that “[t]wo Asian developed nations – South Korea and Japan – sit firmly at the head of the class …” (UNICEF 2002: 5).

The high performance of Japanese and Korean students has received a lot of attention from the U.S. public and researchers. In particular, simple comparisons of national rankings in international surveys, which highlight significantly poorer outcomes of U.S. students relative to their Japanese and Korean peers, have stirred debates about the quality of U.S. education, and have led scholars and media to seek the sources of success of Japanese and Korean education (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983; U.S. Department of Education 1987). Astonished by the markedly low dropout rate among Korean high school students and their excellent performance in international surveys of student achievement, a newspaper article claimed that the “USA could learn from South Korean schools” (Lynch 2008). President Obama has often lauded Korean education’s success, especially pointing out Korean parents’ high levels of interest in children’s education (CNN 2009; Korea Times 2012). In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted the roles of teachers in Korea in students’ educational success.

In contrast to those who consider Japanese and Korean education as a role model for U.S. education, the opposite reaction to Japanese and Korean education does not put too much value on their students’ high average scores in international surveys of student achievement. Critics do not consider Japanese and Korean education, which is claimed to have heavily relied on repetition and rote memorization, as a desirable model to follow. They often accuse Japanese and Korean students of lacking creativity and innovative thinking (Hanushek 2002). Critics have been particularly concerned about educational ‘problems’ caused by the traditional educational system in Japan and Korea, which has long relied on the uniform curriculum and instruction across schools in a nation that is also tightly linked to national entrance exams. One of the typical criticisms, for instance, argues that Japanese and Korean students, especially top students, do not have many opportunities to further advance their knowledge and skills due to the standardized curriculum and instruction designed for average students (Chun 2003; Stevenson 1991). In other words, Japanese and Korean schools are criticized for making talented Japanese and Korean students mediocre.

Moreover, because the high level of educational standardization does not permit specialized and tailored learning opportunities to meet individual students’ needs, critics suppose, numerous Japanese and Korean students rely on private supplementary education that may be better able to provide individualized learning opportunities than public schooling. Articles on East Asian students receiving private supplementary education in various forms such as (one-on-one or group) private tutoring and cram schools are easily found in U.S. media, usually with the negative tone on East Asian education where students suffer from long hours of study (Choe 2009; Ripley 2011). It is often argued that the high prevalence of private supplementary education in Japan and Korea is caused by poor public schooling, particularly the lack of educational choices and differentiated opportunities due to the highly standardized system (Kim and Lee 2010). Some critics even go so far as to claim that the high performance of East Asian students in international surveys of educational achievement should be attributable primarily to their high attendance at private supplementary education, not to East Asian public schooling which is supposed to be of poor quality (Bracey 1997; Goya 1993).

There is no doubt that both Japanese and Korean educational systems have long maintained a high level of educational standardization (Ishikida 2005; Park 2007b), which refers to “the degree to which the quality of education meets the same standards nationwide. Variables such as teacher’s training, school budgets, curricula, and the uniformity of school-leaving examinations are relevant in measuring the standing of an educational system on this dimension” (Allmendidinger 1989: 233). However, critics of Japanese and Korean education often base their arguments on some untested, oversimplified, and stereotyped assumptions about the negative effects of standardized education. Rarely found are empirical studies that systematically put those arguments under empirical scrutiny. To what extent are top students in Japan and Korea really disadvantaged in moving forward compared to top students in other countries? To what extent does the high prevalence of private supplementary education reflect the poor quality of public schooling in Japan and Korea? How can we reconcile this argument with empirical studies highlighting the high quality of teachers and also comparably equal access to teachers of high quality in Japan and Korea (Akiba, LeTendre, and Scribner 2007; Kang and Hong 2008)? Most of all, is private supplementary education effective enough to be claimed as a source of high achievement of Japanese and Korean students? In other words, despite the popularity of those criticisms against Japan and Korea’s standardized educational systems both within and outside of the two countries, they have not yet been subject to systematic empirical validation. Moreover, some studies from other countries actually present some evidence that increased curriculum standardization can lead to enhanced educational outcomes (Gamoran 1996; Van de Werfhorst and Mijs 2010).

In this book, I first identify some of the common stereotypes of Japanese and Korean education and describe in detail their criticisms of Japanese and Korean education. Specifically, among various stereotypical claims about East Asian education, identified in this book are four stereotypes: 1) highly standardized Japanese and Korean school systems make talented students mediocre; 2) Japanese and Korean students suffer from a lack of creativity and independent thinking due to memorization and rote learning under test-driven education; 3) high academic achievement of Japanese and Korean students is not the result of the high quality of public schooling but merely the success of private supplementary education (often called shadow education); and 4) Japanese and Korean educational systems, which are commonly characterized by the distinctively high level of educational standardization and the considerable degree of homogeneity among schools, are sufficiently similar to be treated as one system. The above four typical views of Japanese and Korean education are not the only ones but certainly have been heard frequently in academic and public discourses outside, and even inside, Japan and Korea.

Several factors help explain the resilience of stereotypes of Japanese and Korean educational systems. First, research and public discourse, especially in the West, has failed to catch up with the significant changes in East Asian education during the last two decades, holding on to an old image, which no longer exists. For instance, both Japanese and Korean educational systems have been significantly altered, particularly since the early 2000s, to the extent that the old image of highly standardized education does not adequately describe the latest system. Second, prior literature on international comparisons of student achievement has exclusively focused on national average scores and rankings without carefully looking at the distribution of test scores among students. The distribution shows how much variation in academic performance there is among students within an educational system. This is a fundamental characteristic as it is naturally related to disparities in student performance – namely inequality. As will be demonstrated in later chapters, comparing student performance across countries in different locations of the distribution is a much more useful way of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of an educational system relative to other systems than simply looking at average scores. Third, the lack of appropriate data has prevented the systematic empirical evaluation of arguments for and against the educational approaches in the two East Asian countries. For example, the criticism that Japanese and Korean students lack creativity compared to U.S. students has never been proved with empirical evidence due to the lack of data measuring student creativity across countries. Another good example in relation to the lack of appropriate data is that relatively little is known about high school students and their schools because educational achievement data for high school students in Japan and Korea have become available only recently. A close examination of existing discourses, both favorable and critical, reveals that most comments on Japanese and Korean education pertain to primary or middle (lower secondary) schools, not many to high schools. It is notable that Japanese and Korean educational systems are relatively similar at the primary and middle school levels but diverge at the high school level. Therefore, the lack of data for high school students and their schools has contributed to the image that Japanese and Korean educational systems are similar in their structure, which is more or less true for primary and middle schools.

Throughout the chapters that follow this introduction, each of the four stereotypes of East Asian education is put under empirical scrutiny on the basis of systematic and comprehensive assessment of data from two international surveys of student achievement: TIMSS and PISA. As in previous comparative studies of student achievement, international data of students’ test scores are used in this study as well. However, looking at the same kind of data in different ways will provide more convincing evidence with which to evaluate the validity of stereotypes of Japanese and Korean education. Rather than just focusing on national average scores, a separate analysis of students in different locations of the distribution will be carried out. Looking at the lower end of the distribution, for instance, helps assess how the Japanese and Korean educational systems are successful in preventing low-performing students falling behind compared to other educational systems. Similarly, by comparing students across countries at the higher end of the distribution, we can gain better insight into how high-performing students in Japan and Korea are comparable with high-performing students in other countries. By identifying whether it is at the lower or higher end of the distribution that Japanese and Korean students are particularly strong (or weak) compared to students in other countries, much nuanced understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese and Korean education can be obtained.

Moreover, several features of TIMSS and PISA surveys provide greater leverage than ever before for the empirical evaluation of the critical views of the Korean and Japanese educational approaches. First of all, both TIMSS and PISA surveys collected data before and after the implementation of recent educational reforms that were designed to modify the traditionally standardized educational system in Japan and Korea. If educational outcomes have improved since these educational reforms that aim to direct Japanese and Korean education away from the standardized system, the findings can indirectly support those critics who point out the problems of the standardized educational system. On the other hand, worsening educational outcomes since these educational reforms may cause researchers and policymakers to reconsider the assumptions underlying reform proposals, particularly their negative views of the standardized educational system.

Another important feature of the PISA 2003 survey is that it assessed students’ problem-solving skills in addition to assessing typical academic subjects such as mathematics and science. As will be explained in detail in Chapter 4, PISA’s assessment of problem-solving skills is probably still far from measuring students’ creativity as narrowly defined. However, problem solving requires critically identifying a problem and flexibly applying and connecting knowledge and information beyond typical subject boundaries. Therefore, even if problem solving may not be equivalent to creativity per se, it still can be an extremely useful measure, especially given the lack of relevant measures in international surveys, of critical and creative thinking and application.

By asking whether the common views of Japanese and Korean education are actually stereotypes without an empirical base, the current book aims to offer a closer, more balanced look at the complicated nature of academic achievement among Japanese and Korean students. It aims to carry out a careful reexamination of how Japanese and Korean education actually performs without being influenced by stereotyped and biased preconceptions. Debunking the stereotypes is not to defend the ‘traditional’ educational system but it is the first step to re-evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese and Korean education, especially under the regime of a highly standardized system. The present book questions to what extent the problems of Japanese and Korean education, typically identified by critics of standardized education, are real problems. In this purpose, the current book echoes some of earlier studies that attempted to challenge the stereotypical image that Japanese students suffer from stress and pressure of exams and too many study hours, by presenting counter-evidence that Japanese students themselves do not much consider competition and preparation for exams as negative experiences, and most of all, pressure of exams and hours of study among Japanese students has already decreased to a significant degree (Kariya 2001, 2002).

In order to appropriately cure ‘diseases’ of educational systems, the diagnosis of diseases should be accurate. When the diagnosis is wrong and thus problems are misidentified, new policy measures intended to cure the problems only produce negative consequences. Wrong drugs only makes things worse. Another reason why it is so important to demystify stereotypes is that their misdiagnosis of the problems of Japanese and Korean educational systems has propelled educational reforms to direct Japanese and Korean education away from standardized education. The later chapters illustrate how recent educational reform discourses in both Japan and Korea are closely aligned with the untested and oversimplified criticisms against the standardized system. However, because diagnosis is not based on empirical evidence, the prescription does not seem to work effectively. As will be discussed in Chapter 7, educational reforms since the early 2000s in Japan and Korea have yielded undesirable consequences.

The present book is comprised of seven chapters. Following this introduction chapter, Chapter 2 introduces TIMSS and PISA surveys, which are basic data sources for the analyses carried out in later chapters. Because both data sources are used throughout later chapters, having a separate section on this data helps avoid repeating the introduction of it in every chapter. Because detailed information on data from each survey is available from other materials, the chapter selectively summarizes the minimum information necessary for readers to understand the nature of data analysis. The chapter also briefly describes major features of Japanese and Korean educational systems, focusing on the standardized nature of the schooling process. Moreover, discussed are the basic orientation and specific measures of educational reforms that have attempted, since the early 2000s, to significantly alter the traditional educational system in Japan and Korea toward more differentiated education. This chapter may be read as background material that can be useful to apprehend educational contexts in which reformers criticize the highly standardized educational system in Japan and Korea.

Chapters 3 through 6 explain the backgrounds and arguments of each of the four stereotypes of Japanese and Korean education, respectively, and subject each argument to empirical scrutiny.³ To assess the extent to which the arguments are consistent with empirical evidence, some statistical analyses are carried out using student-level and school-level data from the two data sources (TIMSS and PISA). However, I try to minimize technical discussion on statistical methods, and present the results in a non-technical way especially using figures that effectively summarize key findings. The specific and practical details of statistical analyses should not prevent a big picture from emerging straightforwardly. On the other hand, the results of several statistical analyses conducted in the current book may serve to convince readers how useful such analyses can be to systematically evaluate arguments that are often not subject to empirical scrutiny. For comparison with Japan and Korea, I select the United States from TIMSS, and Finland, Germany, and the United States from PISA. The reason why these countries are selected for comparison will be explained in Chapter 2.

Specifically, Chapter 3 discusses a common criticism that the standardized curriculum and instruction in Japanese and Korean schools makes talented students mediocre by offering few learning opportunities to enhance their high abilities with separate curriculum and instruction adequate to their ability levels. This criticism leads to an expectation that top students in Japan and Korea should display a relatively weak performance compared with top students in other countries, especially where students of varied orientations and abilities are separated into different schools, classrooms, or groups and are exposed to different curricula and varying paces and methods of instruction. In educational systems that sort students into different curricula and instructions, brightest students are supposed to enjoy more customized learning opportunities. However, empirical evidence from the analyses of TIMSS and PISA data does not support this argument. Comparing mathematics and science performance shows that Japanese and Korean students at the top significantly outperform top students in Finland, Germany, and the United States, questioning the argument that the highly standardized educational system should have suppressed performance of brightest students. More impressive is the fact that at the lower end of the distribution, East Asian students outperform German and U.S. students to a greater degree than at the higher end.

Chapter 4 turns to the popular image that the standardized and test-driven educational system in Japan and Korea fails to nurture students’ creativity and critical th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Data and educational systems
• 3 Demystifying the stereotype: do Japanese and Korean schools make talented students mediocre?
• 4 Demystifying the stereotype: do Japanese and Korean students achieve high test scores at the expense of creativity?
• 5 Demystifying the stereotype: are high test scores of Japanese and Korean students due to ‘shadow education’?
• 6 Demystifying the stereotype: are Japanese and Korean schools homogenous?
• 7 Conclusion: the troubling turn
• Notes
• References
• Index